


A Million Voices, But It's Yours I Hear

by KiwiLeif



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: A teensy tiny bit of angst, Aziraphale Likes Stuff and I'm here to prove why, Barely any semblance of a plot this is mostly just Aziraphale introspection city, Character Study, Established Relationship, Hivemind but loosely, Literally this is just so god damn indulgent, M/M, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Self-Discovery, The Bentley and the biscuit tin are girlfriends I don't make the rules
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:48:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27159542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiwiLeif/pseuds/KiwiLeif
Summary: The thing about being an angel is that one is never truly alone with one's thoughts. The line between what is you and what is everyone else can get… muddled, a little. A little fuzzy around the edges.How does Aziraphale explain himself, when he's not even sure it's himself he's explaining.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 31





	A Million Voices, But It's Yours I Hear

The thing about being an angel is that it's never just _quiet_. One is never quite _one_ , at least, not in the way a human would understand it _._ One is never truly alone with one's thoughts, so the line between what is _you_ and what is _everyone else_ can get… muddled, a little. A little fuzzy around the edges. Certainly, the hard facts are there, hardwired – one's name, one's rank, one's job. How one holds a blade or a book. How to concoct the stars, how to sing praise. That sort of thing. But everything else? When one is surrounded by the voices of scores of millions of other Ones, it's difficult to remember what was one's thought and which was theirs. Not impossible, certainly, with a little concentration, but not easy, either.

The thing about being a _demon_ , well, is much the same, except instead of it being noisy on the _inside,_ demons make themselves busy being noisy on the _outside._ Where there was once the complex grid of self and grace that spread through each and every one of them, connecting everyone's song and praise and knowledge and mundane thought, there is only the mortifying ordeal of being _unknown._ After the screaming and flailing and falling into the sulphurous pit, where one can't hear much of anything outside one's own terror, there's the landing, and the splashing, and the gasping and grasping and gnashing of teeth, and then.

Well. Then, there is only you.

And those parts of you that were supposedly hardwired? Those thin anchors of self that separated you from the collective even in the deepest throes of their unified noise? Suddenly, they are not so. Your name? Gone. Your rank? Oh, certainly gone. Your job? Fuck, what was it again? Does it even matter? You can't do it any more anyway, so what's the point in remembering.

You fill the silence with noise, because to do anything else would be quite unbearable.

The interesting thing, once the screaming and poking at each other and pulling the tarred remnants of feathers out gets boring, is that the noise you make becomes… _weighted._ Things that are said aloud… they have to _mean_ something, in a way that they never did before. When everyone is on board with the big nebulous Plan, when everyone is connected, there's no need for the conviction of your words, because everyone already _understands._ You are following a Plan, and your actions and thoughts are as inevitable as everyone else's.

When you are alone with your thoughts, and so is everyone else, you need to _explain yourself._ Untethered, your thoughts can saunter off in any direction they please, just as much as they can spin around and around on the end of a new and brimstone-burnt pin.

And that's the rub, isn’t it? Aziraphale and Crowley are quite different creatures, and where Aziraphale expects Crowley to just… understand him, Crowley expects Aziraphale to _explain_ _himself_. And when what is your thought and what is the thought of everyone else gets muddled up in the tide of sound that Crowley can't hear, will never hear again, it's… It's difficult. The explaining. Because which part of it is Aziraphale's opinion, and which part of it is someone else's? If he explains himself, does he explain _himself_ , or is that Gabriel, or Uriel, or Marael or Ursion or the millions of other angels whose names he knows but who he's never even met?

It's a learning process, is what it is, and every time he sees the frustration of _not quite understanding each other_ in Crowley's eyes, he commits himself harder to finding what makes him _him._

It takes practice. Always, always, there is the hum of selves in his mind, and he knows his hum is somewhere in theirs. But, while no angel is an island, they also aren't that far off from being an archipelago, if one doesn't mind working on it a little. After all, _he_ doesn't need to know how to concoct the stars, because it's not his job. It's not exactly being kept secret from him, by any means. He could go to any record keeper and have a nice little gander at the manuals any time he wanted. But it's also not knowledge that really has any _need_ to go floating around the collective noise, so it just _isn't_.

Likewise, how to handle a sword and lead a platoon of angels into battle is knowledge that he has, as a Principality with his job as Guardian of the Eastern Gate, that's intrinsic to him, and no one else really needs to know it but others of similar rank and role. It's not _hidden_. It's simply… omitted.

So, what's wrong with omitting a little extra?

It takes practice, and thank goodness that the Arrangement isn't proposed for a good long while after the humans are exiled from Eden, because the shock of it would have been sent straight up into the heart of the noise like a particularly traitorous rocket, and a choir of angels would have come down in an instant to smite them both. And oh, if Crowley was smote, because of him, because he couldn't separate himself from the others in Heaven, then Aziraphale would gladly welcome his brothers' blade.

And _oh_. _Crowley_. The one who looks at him with such imploring eyes, talks so _blessedly_ much, always _explaining himself._ Oh, he knows his confused, muddled affections for the one who is Crawly, now Crowley, now Crowley ibn Crowley _,_ now Crowley al-Madini bint Crowley, and always changing forever onwards, is somewhere up there in the collective. Gabriel's come to him more than once just to warn him of it, in fact. It's easy to chalk it up to that good old ineffable loving of all things, and that's usually enough to keep him away for a few more centuries, because it's _true_. Aziraphale _does_ love everything, in a way that seems much bigger and much more _personal_ than other angels do, and that love includes the demons. Especially one particular demon.

It's something, he's come to realise, that separates him from them.

The noise lessens.

It doesn't go away, even when he's sure he's locked his own thoughts away in a steel trap, just enough inconsequential noise squeezing out of the edges to appease Heaven. Certainly, he can lock himself _in._ The trouble, rather, is locking the others _out._ He's not even sure there _is_ a way, at least, not for those still in God's grace. Becoming an island was a punishment, an irreparable tearing out of God's grace from the very heart of oneself, and so long as Aziraphale is still, somehow, not Fallen, he can never be more than an archipelago. Much like how he can never quite get rid of the customers who flock to his lovely little bookshop, he can't quite get rid of the hum of a million angels in his head.

It's why, he thinks, that he clings to his books. His clothes. London itself. Those things that separate him from the never-ceasing Others.

He doesn't do what Crowley does. His home is a genuine plot of land in Soho, where Crowley's is a miracled space inside an unused closet in a London flat. His clothes are ancient, well-cared-for things, carefully tailored by men long dead, where Crowley's are whipped into being after he's seen something he likes in a window, or on the television, and oftentimes vanish as soon as he's bored with them or they fall out of style. He keeps his books, his letters, his… his snuffboxes, where Crowley worships at the gilded altar of minimalism. He keeps his _things,_ the things that he _likes,_ that separate _him_ from _them_ and are _worth preserving, for Somebody's sake,_ because they are _his_ and he needs to remind himself of that in his darkest moments, when he is all but swept away in that _dreadful_ never-ending _noise of Others inside his head where he stops being Aziraphale in every way that matters, when he is just his name and rank and job and nothing else, because they don't care, no one in Heaven gives the slightest damn what he likes because he is meaningless up there, a cog in an ineffable wheel he can't even begin to grasp the meaning of, because no one will tell him, because no one knows, because everyone just Goes Along With The Plan that everyone agrees on and nobody questions –_

Crowley snores, from his spot in the bay window, where the sun shines best, and Aziraphale is… present, again.

" _Darling_ ," he says fondly, because he _wants_ to, because he _can._ He doesn't say it loud enough to wake him, he's sure of it, but he doesn't _say_ it for Crowley. He says it for _himself._ He is Aziraphale, Principality on Earth, who loves this demon and loves this world to the point of Falling, and he can say his affections out loud without that happening.

That's the strange thing. Oh, there's rather a lot of Not Knowing with this whole existing business, with what might happen tomorrow, where the Plan is going, if it even exists, if God can still hear any of them. But this one. The not Falling. This is quite the conundrum.

And one that… well. One he rather thinks he might have an answer for.

Crowley disobeyed Heaven, put his lot in with the Morningstar. This is a rational enough reason to Fall, at least, for the time. However, this Falling becomes irrational when you consider that Aziraphale is still here, an angel, who lied to God right to Her face and got away with it.

Likewise, is this not what Crowley has done? All he ever wanted was to be afforded the freedoms that humans have, to ask questions. Crowley loves earth and the humans far more deeply than any angel. Forgive him his ego, but Aziraphale is quite certain that the only creature who loves them to the same degree as Crowley does, is Aziraphale himself.

And since they are so very alike, to intrinsically identical, then the only reason that Crowley has Fallen and Aziraphale has not, is a matter of the timing.

After all, he may not have thrown his hat in with Lucifer, but he _has_ thrown his hat in with the humans. Even when he lied to God's face, it was about giving his sword to Adam, to _protect the_ _humans_. This is what Crowley would have done, if humans had been free from Eden at the time of Lucifer's uprising. But, of course, they had not been, because Crowley had not been a demon on Earth to tempt Eve. No, Crowley's only option was to turn to Lucifer, the effectual stand-in for the eventual middle-ground that was humanity.

Crowley had to Fall, for the humans to be tempted, for the realm of the humans to become that safe space to ask questions. That safe space that Aziraphale now takes advantage of. That safe space that keeps _angels like Crowley_ from Falling.

It is the deepest cut. Aziraphale wishes, desperately, that it was not true. And yet, nothing else makes sense. Every day he does not Fall is proof. He and Crowley are _the same._

"Darling," he says, again, drawing closer to him. "My darling, my heart. My love."

Crowley is a deep sleeper, naturally, what with being able to 'nap' for decades at a time without stirring, but he does seem attuned to certain things. Oh, he has no doubt a bomb could drop on Soho and Crowley would hardly shift, but if Aziraphale were to speak to him, really speak to him, in the grip of his deepest, loveliest dreams, Crowley would rise without a thought. In many cases since the Apocalypse That Wasn't, Aziraphale has found that even speaking is not strictly necessary to awaken his demon. Just the tic-tic-ticcing of his jaw in the face of a belligerent customer seems enough to bring Crowley to wakefulness, uncurling his body in that miraculously never-ending shaft of sunlight, dust motes shining about him like stars as he calls his angel to lunch, to dinner, to close for the night.

("Don't see why you keep this place a bookshop," Crowley has said, because they have this conversation every few years. Usually when a customer has been _particularly_ unbearable.

"Knowledge is for everyone!" Aziraphale has protested, as he always has. "I cannot just… _hoard_ it for myself." He says 'hoard' like a dirty word, even though they both know well and good that that's exactly what he is.

"Then make the place a library, angel. You're telling me you can't whip up a little miracle, make it so every book doesn't end up right back home where it belongs when it's due?"

"I can't use frivolous miracles on the humans, Crowley."

"I'm not talking a miracle on _them._ I mean the _books._ For G – for Somebody's sake, we were just going down Regent Street –"

" _You_ were going down Regent Street, _I_ wanted you to slow down –"

"Exactly! Exactly, angel! I was going down Regent Street so fast I'd easily discorporate us both if I wasn't concentrating, but you don't see the humans reporting a reality-bending Bentley zipping through the streets of London at ninety miles-per-hour, because they don't _notice._ If it doesn't fit in their heads, it doesn't exist. You make the book vanish, poof! They stop caring."

"But they'd wonder where it could have got to. They'd… they'd worry," he's pouted. Bit of a tradition, that part.

"Sure, for a minute. They'll have a little tizzy about their missing library book, then they'll wait for your letter of missing dues, and when it doesn't come, they'll forget about it just like they forget everything else."

A scandalised inhale. "I can't encourage them to think they can get away with stealing!"

" _Aziraphale_ ," Crowley has started, has always started –

"No! Out of the question!"

And so on and so on.)

"Crowley," he says, in the here and now, in this world that exists because of Crowley's sacrifices, because of Crowley's wiles. Everything they love here is because of _him_. He runs his hand over the demon's hair, flat and soft where the miracled coiffing has faded in his sleep. He owes Crowley _everything._

"My dear, I'd like for us to go out for a bit. What do you say?"

"Mnum," Crowley says, smacking his lips.

He smiles, soft and inexorable. A man passing the door of the bookshop is suddenly hit with a wave of good feeling, and calls his partner to apologise for not picking his socks up from the floor last night. His partner is baffled, because they didn't even mention the socks, but is pleased nonetheless.

"I could go out by myself, of course, but I'd have to close the shop, and I don't want you to not know that I've popped out and wonder where I've –"

"'M up," Crowley says, because he's a sucker and Aziraphale has very much played him for one. "'M up. Where d'you wanna…" He yawns, his jaw opening just a little too far to be strictly natural, and leans away from the beam of light and into Aziraphale. "… Go?"

He hums like he's thinking on it, but he's already had an idea for quite some time. "I rather thought we might go for a little drive. Somewhere with long roads."

And oh, what a small delight it is to see Crowley's back straighten, just for a moment, as he perks with excitement, before he remembers himself and affects his slouching rockstar persona again. "Sounds good, angel."

He holds out his hand, and helps Crowley up. He uses just the right amount of force, but still he finds that Crowley falls into him, his body sun-soaked and perfectly suited for a spot of cuddling, which he does with glee. "The biscuit tin in the back could do with replenishing."

They stay locked together for longer than necessary, arms around hips and shoulders, but who's to stop them? "What mood are you in for?"

He brushes lint off of Crowley's back. "Mm… malted milks, I think."

Crowley snaps his fingers, and just outside, the biscuit tin in the Bentley finds itself filled. It used to get surprised by this happening, but it's gotten used to it by now. Likewise, the Bentley is nonplussed to find the latest parking tickets vanished from its windscreen. They rather get along now: the Bentley and the biscuit tin. A little bit of Crowley and a little bit of Aziraphale, together.

"One moment, I just need to get my coat…"

"Already here, angel. Come on, I'll hold it up for you…"

"Oh, thank you my dear. I really…"

"Ngk. Nothing to it, angel, I…"

"Oh, really, don't be bashful…"

"You really must change those opening times. I'm thinking something even more nonsensical, I've got some ideas…"

"Changing the subject! You shy old thing. Come here."

"Hngk," Crowley says, but it's him who leans in for the kiss first, and if the warmth of it just so happens to slip past Aziraphale's defences and fly up to join the sound of a million angels going about their days, then well, they're just going to have to deal with it.

**Author's Note:**

> heck :')


End file.
